UK Casinos

UK Online Casinos with low deposit limits

The casinos listed here all welcome players from the UK. That does NOT mean that all these casinos have a UKGC licence. Most of them do have one of these licences, but those ones that also accept USA players will not be UKGC licenced.

Online Casino Gaming in the United Kingdom

If there’s one country that holds a place of special importance when it comes to online gaming as such, we’d say that it’s undoubtedly the United Kingdom. This is the one country in which online betting – and, by extension, online casino gaming – has always had the best position, never really coming under intense scrutiny by the lawmakers.

What’s more, while many other countries are currently looking at various options when it comes to regulating the industry and perhaps even trying to attack it directly by measures such as websites blocking, the UK authorities don’t seem to be considering measures this strict.

A Bit of History

The United Kingdom has always been very friendly to all sorts of gambling, with sports betting having an incredibly long tradition in the country. Although online casinos have never been as popular as online bookmakers, these two areas are often grouped together when it comes to legislation, which means that both players and online casinos have always had it easy in the country.

If we were to select the most important year for online casino gaming in the UK, it would certainly be the year of 2005, which is when the UK Gambling Act came into force. Up to this day, it’s still arguably the most liberal piece of legislation the world has ever seen, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that it opened the door for a big online boom in the UK. Ironically, this door-opener came just a year ahead of the controversial UIGEA that brought the US casino and poker market to a standstill.

The UK online casino gaming industry has been flourishing since then with only the occasional hiccup, although the authorities did send a few shockwaves through the scene in 2014, which is the year in which the original UK Gambling Act received slight updates, the most important of which is the introduction of a new tax that should bring more money to the national coffers. Many bookmakers and casinos reacted to this development by withdrawing from the UK market, but some of them actually returned after a short while, taking the view that the tax is just a small price to pay for access to what’s arguably the most lucrative market in Europe. Apart from the tax thing, the updated UK Gambling Act also requires foreign operators to have a UK license, but that’s actually not a big issue, as those licenses aren’t that hard to get.

Even so, for the first time, UK players found that they were not welcome at some well known online casinos.

Casino Availability

Most UK facing gambling companies have gotten a UK licence by now, so household gambling naems such as BetVictor and Ladbrokes welcome UK players. But new casinos, and those that do not have a physical presence in the British Isles, often choose not to get licenced for the UK.

Any online site that had these players before the law came into effect has either closed out their accounts, or more likely, directed those players to new, licenced casinos.

Deposits

The availability of online casinos isn’t the only thing that UK excels in, as UK players are also getting a virtually unmatched selection of deposit methods that they can use in order to get some money into their online accounts.

Despite all those options, however, it’s credit cards and direct bank transfers that remain to be the most popular payment methods, which is all down to the small detail that they are readily available to virtually every single UK player out there. Both of these options do come with certain issues, however. While casino deposit by Visa and Mastercard deposits can be quite costly due to some online casinos making the players pay a fee for using them, bank transfers can take up to a week to get processed, which is a time frame that you might not be too keen on accepting. To be fair, many online casinos are offering a number of instant bank transfer options, but only a handful of banks is typically supported when it comes to them.

There’s no need to stick to the two old-fashioned choices, however, and many veteran gamers have already made the switch to one of the various e-wallets, with Skrill and Neteller being the two most popular choices. E-wallets are incredibly flexible and come with numerous additional benefits that credit cards and bank transfers simply don’t have, so they’re definitely worth checking out.

Meanwhile, those of you who want to venture off the beaten path can also explore options such as PugglePay or Paylevo.

Finally, if you want to stay completely anonymous as far as the payments are concerned, you can turn your attention towards the various pre-paid cards, such as Paysafecard, the vast majority of which is available in the United Kingdom.

Withdrawals

Requesting withdrawals is tricky business when it comes to players from, say, the United States, but UK players should never have any issues getting their money back from the online casino they’re playing at. As a general rule, you should be able to request a withdrawal through the very same method through which you made your deposit – and some online casinos will actually require you to do so, not leaving you with much choice.

As far as the time frames are concerned, withdrawals can take from a few hours to a few days – and it all depends not only on the payment method, but also on the practices of the given online casino. While the most reputable of them will process your e-wallet withdrawals in just a couple of hours, that’s just never going to happen as far as withdrawals through regular bank transfers are concerned, as those will always take at least a day or two.

If you deposited through a payment method that doesn’t allow for withdrawals – and even some credit cards such as Mastercard won’t allow you to withdraw back to them – you’ll typically be given the option to request a bank transfer, since that’s something that should be acceptable for virtually everyone. However, if you contact the customer service and explain your situation to them, you should be able to get access to other methods – especially e-wallets – as well.

It should also be noted that the vast majority of online casinos will ask for a number of personal documents when you decide to withdraw your money for the very first time, so make sure that you can scan a thing or two once you decide to do so. Nobody’s particularly happy about having to go through this process, but there’s no getting around it for those casinos that hold UK licenses.

Quirks and Details

To be absolutely honest, there aren’t all that many quirks when it comes to online casino gaming in the United Kingdom, as the situation is so good on all the fronts that it’s almost monotonous to a degree. Some will say that this isn’t all that great, but we would actually disagree – as far as we are concerned, it’s actually a welcome change from all the roughness that can be found elsewhere.

There’s one tip that we feel obliged to share with you, however. If you’re looking to get the most out of the various bonuses and promotions – and we’re sure that you do – you need to be aware of the fact that some online casinos aren’t too keen on providing them for deposits make through certain payment methods. Although the situation has improved somewhat over the last few years, it’s still best to check the exact terms and conditions of the given bonus before making a qualifying deposit by, say, Skrill, as doing that might allow you to avoid a nasty surprise or two.

Depositing through e-wallets is of particular concern here, as some online casinos seem to believe that they are used mainly by advantage players and bonus hunters that aren’t playing just for the fun of it. There was probably some rationale behind that thinking a couple of years ago, but e-wallets are so popular now that we expect to see online casinos getting rid of all such restrictive measures in the near future.

Future Outlook

As far as the future of online casino gaming in the UK is concerned, we don’t really have any bad news for the players, so it seems that the country will remain to be a paradise for them going forward.

This is in stark contrast to the changes that are happening in the rest of the European Union, which is currently split into three types of countries. The first type, which includes the likes of France, Spain, Italy and Greece, is trying to harshly regulate the industry in order to gain more money from it – and it’s not just the additional taxes the countries are introducing, it’s also the measures such as websites blocking or payments blocking. The second type, which includes virtually all the Scandinavian countries, is regulating the industry primarily for various social reasons, although the measures are very similar to the ones we’ve already mentioned. Finally, the third type, which includes Central and Eastern Europe, is just carefully considering all the options nowadays, but it’s nonetheless almost impossible to find a country that wouldn’t want to tighten the regulations at least by a bit.

The United Kingdom doesn’t belong to any of those groups – instead, it seems to be following an independent course that stems from the fact that it’s a place that loves its sports betting. That’s not to say that there aren’t any lawmakers that wouldn’t want to see the industry change, but the proposals are typically limited to just minor details and tax increases, with more radical ideas being few and far between. This certainly is a breath of fresh air – and we hope that things won’t take a turn for the worse going forward.

Summary

Put simply, we wouldn’t hesitate to call the UK a heaven for online casino gaming – not only do all the big online casinos have it as one of its main markets, but players also don’t have to jump through any hoops to get to them and their games. While the second part of that sentence is also true for many other European countries, the UK seems to be the only one that’s not all that interested in over-regulating the entire online gaming industry, which is the key point that makes it well and truly stand out from the rest.